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Steve Mansfield

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Everything posted by Steve Mansfield

  1. That's it, the thread is over, we have a clear winner
  2. Ɓukasz's post pretty much identically mirrors what I was about to write, and very neatly summarises why I've stopped participating in TOTM. Sorry, but there you go.
  3. Ew, I wouldn't, I really wouldn't - try that on thesession.org or Mudcat and see how long the flame war runs ....
  4. Good advice above; but as another viewpoint, when the old Usenet uk.music.folk newsgroup turned their collective brain to this very subject we came up with the following list, and as a basic (English-repertoire-centric) list it still holds up today ... Enrico, Speed The Plough, Michael Turner's Waltz, Soldiers Joy, Walter Bulwer's polkas, New Rigged Ship, Harpers Frolic / Bonny Kate, Bacup Coconut Dance, Sweets of May, Captain Leno's, Steamboat hornpipe, Nutting Girl, Maggie in the Wood, Three Around Three, Jimmy Allen, The Keel Row, Captain Pugwash (aka Trumpet Hornpipe), Morpeth Rant, Oyster Girl, Hunt the Squirrel, Queen's Jig, Haste to the Wedding, Smash the Windows, The Man in the Moon, Orange in Bloom (aka Sherbourne Waltz). And an abc file of that list is available from http://lesession.co.uk/music/UmfFaqSessionTunes.abc
  5. It's an area I'm just starting to explore myself, but I've found that full-fat multi-note chords are indeed far too heavy in most cases. It's a huge area and one that's very hard to explain in text, but try taking out some of the notes - as one example try just playing the root and 5th (so in a chord of C that would be a C and the G above, omitting the 3rd which is the E; this also has the pleasing effect of removing the rigid delineation of whether it's a major or a minor chord). If you're supporting a tune, you'll (I'll) quite often find that just one extra harmony note is sufficient. If you're backing a singer or another instrumentalist, two-note chords will often do the job; try and get away from the root-and-fifth straitjacket (again, in C, that's C and G) and its close cousin the C with the G below. Arpeggios are also good. Trial and error is the key - musical theory will help, but you'll come up with some great stuff just by trying out various notes and two-button chords against the melody. I try and work on that side of my playing whilst I'm the only one in the house, and even the dogs end up retreating to other rooms, but like any other aspect of playing there's no real shortcut to putting the hours in. (Although a help would be to get along to one of Rob Harbron's workshops, where you'll come away with years-worth of ideas).
  6. We probably need to page Mr Terry McGee at this point, as he seems to understand these things, but I've used a decibel meter to compare fifes before now and found it don't mean nothing. After a happy morning carefully measuring two instruments on an iPhone decibel meter (don't know which one, not my phone) followed by an afternoon swapping between the two out With the Morris side, I found that the fife that the Decibel meter reckoned was the loudest just doesn't carry outdoors, while the one that was supposedly much quieter had people hiding under tables and thinking Armageddon had started. So of course I always play the Armageddon one It must be something to do with the harmonics, or the partials, or the acoustic oojamaflip, at which point this Arts graduate retires from the field and calls on someone who actually knows something about acoustics to take over ... [my iPad autocorrect consistently tries to replace Armageddon with Agamemnon. What a classically educated device ]
  7. Ooh I like that - works really nicely on EC too. I love learning new ornaments - I then wildly overuse them for a few months until they bed into the general repertoire, so I suspect all my rolls will be played like that for a while, and rolls will also probably be appearing in places that have never been rolled before just so I can use it
  8. I tried out several quality antique baritone ECs before settling on a Morse Geordie, and have never regretted it. My treble is an antique Wheatstone and I'm in two minds whether to go for a Type 21/Type 22 or an Albion if/when I upgrade. The main thing for me is the sound of them - I'm probably going to be excommunicated for this, but I really think I prefer the Morse reed sound to a more traditional steel-reeded EC. The other factor is that I love my Wheatstone treble but it is a bit delicate and high-maintenance, whereas the Morse is always on and ready to play whatever I choose to throw at it. And they smell just gorgeous for the first few months - a friend bought a Martin guitar, and used to regularly put his nose to the sound-hole and just inhale. I always thought he was mad until one day I caught myself opening the Geordie case and just luxuriating in that aroma of newly-minted Morse ...
  9. Can you give us a few notes in an audio file or abc? There's the Moving Bog, the Moving Cloud and the Moving Pint, and probably many others!
  10. Ah, great, thank you. I hadn't really noticed the similarity to The Abbess, I must admit, but now you mention it ...
  11. Can any kind soul identify the very first tune Saul Rose is playing in this video? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8qUVzEYnnkM Thanks
  12. I'm not sure about the common conjecture that people who read music are more inclined to play EC. I do read music, and think it's an absolutely invaluable tool for remembering old tunes, learning the basics of new ones, and communicating ideas in group situations. However I also feel that I don't really know an instrument until I can pick things up by ear on that instrument; and I certainly don't think that I've used music with the EC any more than any of my other instruments. From the great discussion on this thread and others down the years I'd suggest the choice of system comes down to some combination of the style of music you play; how your brain works and how you personally find the ergonomics of the different systems; what brought you to concertina in the first place; and very often just whichever system you happened to come across first!
  13. There were two main factors at play for me - Firstly, the two local players who really made me appreciate the concertina both played English. Secondly, after many attempts and personal tuition and tutor books, I've come to accept that my brain just does not do bisonoric instruments - anglos and melodeons are, to me, completely unintuitive and baffle the heck out of me. So English it is, and very happy I am too! My wife, however, plays anglo and regards the hand position of the EC as a cruel and unnatural punishment ...
  14. Ah, cross-posted with Myrtle's Cook there - luckily neither of us are directly contradicting the other
  15. My Jackie travels around in one of those very cases on the rare occasions when it goes out the house into situations I don't want to take the expensive ECs. (That sounds like I'm regularly the first concertina player parachuted into a war zone - actually it's camping trips, potentially wet outdoor gigs, stuff like that). I'm pretty sure the corner pieces are a tough plastic, and are indeed very furniture-friendly. An Ebay.co.uk search for 'case corner protectors' comes up with several plastic options, although trying the same search on ebay.com is less successful; so maybe there's a terminology thing going on here!
  16. Thanks for that video link, brilliant stuff. Now to get to see him live
  17. Not missing anything, but maybe over-thinking it a bit! For reading from staff notation the lowest C (left hand, bottom of third row) would indeed be middle C. Whilst in abc notation C is middle C, c the octave above, and c' the octave above that, there's no guarantee that the creator of the fingering chart had that convention in mind. I could use the same chart with my baritone and the note relationships would be exactly the same, but c on that chart would then sound the C below middle C.
  18. T:Huhtikuun polkka Nice! Any idea what all the V and U notations are meant to be - direction marks on the fiddle bow (which should therefore be lower-case)? I know it's not your transcription, but that's my guess & as such they sort-of make sense to my very limited understanding of what Them There Fiddlers get up to ...
  19. Found his FB page but couldn't find any music on there. Congratulations to him!
  20. That's good news Mike. House-moving is a swine isn't it; hope you can get back to the fun things in life soon enough.
  21. Extra Strong baritone? In my professional life ESB is an Enterprise Service Bus, but I'm guessing Morse haven't branched out into software architecture ... I've got a Morse Geordie EC baritone and that is a really lovely box, so the ESB should be really nice for those of an anglo persuasion. All of the various Morse boxes are named after members of the Morse family, so maybe it's Endeavour Morse who's being honoured this time!
  22. Well this thread prompted me to finally get around to buying a copy of Bal Folk, and it arrived from Amazon today. Looks good, fine tune playing ahoy!
  23. Thanks for that, it certainly made me (i chuckle (ii Google the original - https://www.library.yorku.ca/find/Record/3114525 [Edited - curse the flipping post editor converting everything it can into a smiley. I posted some abc on Facebook yesterday and that did the same thing to the standard colon and right-square-bracket ending of a repeat at the end of a tune. It drives me MAD I tell you! Thank you, we now return you to our regular programmes]
  24. Ooh, having read the bit on Gary Chapin's site about the genesis of the Dave Mallinson 'Bal Folk' book, maybe Mel Stevens won't appreciate being thanked for the two Massif Central books after all - he sounds (unjustly) unhappy with them! Shame, as they did a lot to popularise the music, but if that's how he now views them that is absolutely his prerogative ...
  25. Well when you do please thank him from me; two wonderful books, which have given me, and many people I know and play music with, a great deal of pleasure and many cracking tunes down the years. Indeed one of my influences in taking up English concertina was the fine playing of a chap called Dave Collinge who was, like me, a habitue of the Preston Eurojams in the late 90s and early 00s, and in the Eurojams we shared many a tune which had initially come to us through the two Massif Central books.
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